Will Climate Change Lead to Mass Immigration from Mexico?

(The New Republic) July 27, 2010 – Will a hotter climate mean more immigration? In some places, yes, that’s quite possible. Earlier this week, a team of researchers led by Princeton’s Michael Oppenheimer published a study suggesting that as global warming causes agricultural yields in Mexico to decline, an additional 1.4 million to 6.7 million […]

Refusing 'Refuge' in the Pacific: (De)Constructing Climate-Induced Displacement in International Law

Jane McAdam, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales, Australia; and Research Associate, Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, published a paper that calls for a new international treaty for ‘climate refugees’ or ‘climate migrants’. Drawing in part on field work undertaken in Kiribati and Tuvalu, it examines some conceptual and pragmatic difficulties […]

Latest Round of the Climate Talks Update June 2010

Here is a quick update for those of you that are following the UNFCCC Climate Change Talks. The twelfth session of the AWG-KP and tenth session of the AWG-LCA took place from June 1-11 in Bonn. The meeting brought together representatives from 182 countries was attended by over 4,500 participants, including government delegates, representatives from […]

Towards a Soft Law Protection for "Distress Migrants"

“A complex range of often inter-related factors – including the environment and nature, conflict, and the international political economy – contribute to creating the imperatives and incentives for people to leave their countries and cross international borders”, writes Alexander Betts in *. All of these push factors, he argues, might not necessarily guarantee protective status […]

Guest Blogger Vivien Dinh: Children – Agents of Change

The Copenhagen Summit in December marked an important step in mitigating the negative effects of climate change. It also brought to light the greater need to focus on how climate change has been affecting children. UNICEF UK recognized this gap and in a recent report entitled, “Our climate, our children, our responsibility”. UNICEF not only […]

Special Refugee Status for Haiti Earthquake Victims?

Following the earthquake, there has been much discussion for granting special refugee or immigrant status to those affected in Haiti. Here is a good article on this by TIME as well as another article by the Washington Times. A last one is by a fellow blogger Finn Myrstrad. He made a good post about temporary […]